


a study in grief

by playmaker



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gratuitous use of italics, Introspection, like a LOT of italics, purely a vent piece
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-21
Updated: 2017-12-21
Packaged: 2019-02-17 23:11:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13087416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playmaker/pseuds/playmaker
Summary: Taako slips back into himself, eventually.





	a study in grief

**Author's Note:**

> this aint even my writing style i Genuinely do not know what happened lmao?? and what the Fuck is this format??? i dunno what to tell you other than this is just a weird self-projection onto taako about grief and loss and loneliness and discontent and regret and just- idk, the feeling of missing something without really knowing what it is youre missing. general feelings of malaise, i guess

_Time goes, you say? Ah, no. Alas, time stays, we go._

**_-Henry Austin Dobson_ **

* * *

 

There lived a soft sort of wrongness in Taako’s life. It settled deep in his lungs and laboured every breath, lacing each inhale with a mantra: _something is wrong, something is wrong, something is wrong._

An indescribable sense of loss permeated every inch of him, falsifying all the things his mind had insisted were true. There was something in him that couldn’t be placed— and something else entirely that couldn’t be _re_ placed, but the meaning of it was infuriatingly lost to Taako.

He had continued on with his counterfeit life, despite the heavy tug in his chest telling him he should be searching— _Searching for what? For what? It will be fine like this, for now._

As it turned out, _fine_ could not be a permanent home for Taako. Forty people died, and Taako was alone again.

Before Glamour Springs, he had, rather than seek out the root of his malaise, tirelessly searched to prove that someone, _anyone_ , could both love him and need him. It was childish and selfish to search for a love he knew he would not— could not— return, but even so, he longed for _some_ kind of belonging.

 _Someone needed me once,_ he thought to himself. _Someone will need me again._

The dream of being both wanted and needed was consciously abandoned as Taako tried to scrub phantom blood stains off of his hands and bury the weight of the forty tombstones atop his shoulders.

(He would not reconcile with himself for years, but he would compromise. He always did.)

****

Taako did not _settle_. It wasn’t in his blood, whoever he inherited it from, and he was sure it never would be.

However, with the promise of ‘the last job you’ll ever have to take’, the idea of doing nothing, being nothing, seemed more and more appealing the longer he gazed at the flier.

He took the job. There were two others, a fighter and a cleric, that intended to make the journey and earn their keep, and Taako tried not to care.

He _didn’t_ care, really, but there was something about his new companions that dulled the glaring feeling of _wrong_ thrumming it Taako’s veins. He wondered, briefly, if they could feel it too. While it wasn’t quite wrong, it was… _off_. There was something more there that Taako could not, for the life of him, determine.

But there was time to find out, it seemed.

There was a void in Taako that he refused to touch. He refused to touch it not because he was _scared_ , but because it unnerved him that he didn’t know what was supposed to go there.

He didn’t touch it, and so he didn’t realize when it got a little smaller.

There was a skeleton, a red robe, an old umbrella, and vacant, undead eyes staring deeper into Taako that he had ever ventured himself.

_What an ugly feeling to be so known._

He kept the umbrella, and it would feel almost like coming home if Taako had the experience to compare it to. Their party of three remained intact even in the sky.

Before Phandalin, Taako had forgotten what company felt like.

(He hadn’t decided if he liked it or hated it. Not yet.)

****

Their party, Tres Horny Boys, as Merle said and Taako laughed in agreement to, met a boy with a future brighter than the stars.

They met a boy and Taako was reminded of forty people. Seventeen children, eleven mothers, ten fathers, and a couple who had hoped to be parents soon.

Taako saw all forty of their futures in that boys eyes.

Mysteries were solved, spell slots were spent, battles were won, and a boy was kept an arms length away with a barrier of half-hearted insults and masks of colourful disdain.

The three flew back to their moon and Taako could not smother the guilt rising like bile in his throat.

_Something is still wrong._

(He couldn’t remember anymore if it had ever been _right_.)

****

Merle, Magnus, and Taako left their moon once again for another mission.

The city they ended up in was beautiful, but there was an underlying sense of _not quite right_ living there, too. Taako was well acquainted with the concept of not quite right, but while he existed as the embodiment of _close, but still wrong_ , Goldcliff existed in a state of muted corruption; _wrong_ as in _bad_ , not _wrong_ as it _not quite_.

Their focus was on only one sense of wrong in the city, and Taako felt apprehensive about it. There was something about that particular wrong that seemed to make him pause. The wrong they were sent to deal with wasn’t _right_ , but it wasn’t all that _wrong_ , either. It was a _not quite_ . It was wrong like Taako was wrong, not like the city was wrong. What they were sent for was trying to be right— trying to undo the _bad_ wrongs, but it was simply too powerful.

Taako knew well that something too powerful could hardly be _right_ , and if it was, it couldn’t be forever.

Despite his personal feelings on the matter, Taako and his boys had a job to be done.

 _I’m a fully realized creation,_ he lied, theatrics bursting at his seams. Magnus thought it was funny, and Merle laughed too, but when Magnus had turned to talk to Hurley, Merle simply looked at Taako, something almost like pity in his eyes.

Taako did not like being _pitied._

 _I know you do that stupid act to, I don’t know, protect yourself or something,_ Merle had said gruffly, scratching at his beard. _But who are you going to hurt, really?_

Taako laughed and put his mask of, waving Merle off.

Wagons were raced, binicorns were summoned, cherry blossom petals floated through the air, and hearts were mended.

(Taako was not envious. He was not.)

****

Taako was growing comfortable with his tentative found family. Living on a fake moon and retrieving items from a long forgotten war was not what Taako had expected when he took to Phandalin, but it felt more _right_ than anything in his life had so far. There were still pieces missing, he was sure, and with the brief appearance of the red robed spectre in Goldcliff, unplaceable pieces were added to an already impossible puzzle.

_Do you trust me?_

_No, no, I shouldn’t— but I feel like I want to._

Taako did not trust the spectre, but it felt like something almost familiar. Recognition was foreign to Taako; he remembered every face from Glamour Springs, he remembered Sazed, he remembered his childhood, outcast and alone, but those were all things that he would never see again, so they were not things he could _recognize_.

Three turned momentarily to six, and Taako ventured into a kingdom of glittering pink stone to fix a mess that, for once, wasn’t his own.

Lives were lost. Lives were always lost, and this time, they came back. Hundreds of spirits— souls trapped in metal and wire, existed in the Crystal Kingdom, and Taako felt like he would be sick. They met Noelle, and Taako blamed himself.

 _Don’t let this happen again,_ they were told after retrieving the sash. It did though, as it always did, and Taako blamed himself.

Souls were condemned, arms were lost, rocks were eaten, and Kravitz—

Kravitz was not one of the truths Taako longed for, but he gave him one.

_Eight times. You’ve died eight times._

(He didn’t remember death, so maybe— maybe there were other things he was forgetting.)

****

Kravitz came back for Taako. Well, not Taako, but his bounty, which Taako would _not_ stand for. Kravitz didn’t know any other truths that his deaths, but Taako _liked_ him. He was the first person who Taako wasn’t afraid of. He wasn’t afraid of Merle and Magnus— not really— but he was afraid of everything he couldn’t quite place about them. He was afraid of how familiar they felt.

Taako, Magnus, and Merle went on another one of their dangerous missions. They arrived and Magnus felt at home while Taako felt _ill_.

His whole life he had repeated everything he had been through in his head; run his fingers over every memory he could still grasp, trying to find where things went wrong and when Taako stopped feeling like a _person_ and felt more like a puppet. In Refuge, Taako repeated the same day, over and over again. They all did, but to Taako, it was like a sick reminder of his inability to fill that sense of loss. That inability to move _forward._

But he did move forward, a bit— Glamour Springs was not his fault. It was not his fault, but there were still forty dead, so he decided forgiveness would have to wait a little longer.

With the help of Istus, the party fixed little Refuge, and Taako thought that _maybe_ fate wasn’t all that cruel. Maybe it was just the cards Taako had been dealt. Istus told them she had her eye on all of them, after all.

Kravitz came again, but not for his bounty. He came for Refuge, the tired little town that tripped over itself like a scratched record. Taako didn’t know what to tell him, so he settled on suggesting Kravitz take it up with Istus.

 _Why do you do things that are so dangerous?_ Kravitz had asked. He was not there for Refuge anymore. He was there for— well, Taako, didn’t really know, but he hoped Kravitz was there for him.

 _I’m afraid no one else will have me,_ was what Taako said into the space between them.

_But maybe you will._

He didn’t finish that part of the thought out loud, but the thought was there, and Taako could no longer ignore it.

(He decided he had enough of ignoring those things he couldn’t place.)

****

The Suffering Game, it was called, and what a game it was indeed.

Taako had lived his whole life described in a series of losses, so it shouldn’t have impacted him to lose his beauty as much as it did.

_It’s a subjective thing anyway._

Each loss weighed heavily on every member of their party, but ultimately, they had a job to do, and they would see it to the end. It almost _was_ the end too soon, especially for Magnus. He collapsed, and Taako watched him fall. Unconsciousness and death looked the same for a moment, and Taako couldn’t tell which it was. He couldn’t tell at first in Glamour Springs either. Forty died then, and Taako would not let one die now.

Magnus rose up again, and Taako thought that maybe it was still fine, but when a knife-sharp grin carved itself onto his face, Taako knew what he needed to do. He blinked, he slipped out of himself, and he trusted Merle to help.

Magnus was being pulled away, sucked into a ugly black hole by tar-like tendrils, but neither he nor Taako would let go that easily.

Arms outstretched and latched onto one another, a glowing magic hand latched onto them, and—

Taako saw Kravitz drowning, then he saw _red_.

 _It’s a choice,_ Taako realized. _It’s a choice and I’ve already made it._

He tightened his grip on Magnus and did not look down into the inky sea again. If he could, he would go back for Kravitz. Taako would not get his hopes up.

(What was one more loss, really?)

****

The pieces all fell together, but all it left him with was _rage_.

_You took everything from me, you did this to me, you ruined me, you ruined me, you—_

Taako didn’t forgive himself for forgetting, because he still believed that something so important, someone like Lup, shouldn’t be so easy to forget.

Still, he forgot, and still, he coping with that.

 _Forgive and forget_ sounded like such a cruel term, all things considered, so Taako decided he would not forgive if it meant forgetting. Not so soon, at least.

****

A twin returned and a war was fought. Kravitz returned and a kiss was shared. Lives were lost and cities were destroyed.

Most importantly, a century long war was _won._ A war was won, and peace became inevitable.

****

Taako slipped back into himself, eventually. Forgiveness was not a dance easily learned, and Taako had been tripping over himself for years.

_The real monsters are buried six feet under, Taako._

Lup wanted him to forgive himself. She wanted him to _heal_.

_Don’t go digging them back up, okay?_

Recovery was not an easy process, but Taako had all the time in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> where all the lonely depressed fucks with ptsd at? holla @ ya boy bc same  
> i didnt proofread OR have a beta so expect mistakes this is just a shitty vent piece


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